Just Like Lex
by Irhaboggles
Summary: As much as Lena liked to say that she was nothing like Lex, it wasn't quite as simple as that. In some cases, Lena could be just like Lex.


As much as Lena liked to say that she was nothing like Lex, it wasn't quite as simple as that. Oh, true, Lena was far kinder and gentler than Lex ever was (or ever would be), but the subconscious forces that drove both of them to their highest highs and lowest lows were actually quite similar. In some cases, Lena could be just like Lex. Both of them were driven by a desire to be loved. Even if Lex's desires were more twisted and selfish, both he and Lena did a lot of their work in hopes of one day being seen for the wonders that they were. And in some dark sense, both of the Luthors were only trying to make the world a better place. It just depended on which one you asked what the definition of "a better place" was.

To Lex, this was a world where humans did not need gods or aliens in order to be great. They would rely upon their own capabilities, free from outside forces. Technology would reign supreme, not petty old superstitions or invaders from outer space who got lucky because of the sun. People would reach their full potential on their own time, and they would get everything they deserved for hard, honest, natural work and wit and skill, not dumb luck. Even if Lex had to turn the sun red and kill billions of people, there would come a day when he annihilated Superman and woke the world up from their idol-worshiping ways. When that day finally came, when Lex freed humanity from their slave-like mentality, he would be hailed for the hero he had always been. It would be the classic story of the underdog, misunderstood and beaten down, yet refusing to give up until he returned to the glorious homecoming he deserved! And the world would thank him for it one day. They would see…

To Lena, a perfect world was one where humans could not harm one another. Not anymore. Hatred, deceit and betrayal would simply cease to exist and only peace, love, loyalty, honesty, empathy and integrity would remain. Humans would no longer wish to harm one another. Instead, all selfish and violent desires would end. Humans would _want_ to get along, and to be caring and compassionate to one another. Even if she had to modify the brain of every person on the planet, there would come a day when she made all of humanity calm, polite, friendly, docile and gentle. There would be no more anger, pain, grief or bloodshed. When that day finally came, when Lena woke the world up from their wicked ways and their slave-like mentality, she would be seen as the good guy she'd always been. It would be the classic story of the underdog, misunderstood and beaten down, yet refusing to give up until she returned to the glorious homecoming she deserved! Her name would finally be clean and clear and the world would see that she was a good Luthor!

But even beyond motivation, Lena and Lex shared some very similar base personality traits. They were both smart, cunning, determined, misunderstood, ruthless and, unfortunately, short-sighed and narrow-minded. They each had something of a god-complex, incapable of seeing their own flaws, yet dead-set on seeing everyone else's. They both managed to always justify their actions, no matter how shady those actions became. Lex found the power to justify mass-murder for the sake of killing Superman. Lena found the power to justify mass-brainwashing for the sake of a supposed utopia. No matter how much pain either Luthor caused, they both remained insistent that they were the ones in the right and that any opposition was wrong and stupid. They were both certain that they were the good guys, the saviors and enlighteners, the only smart people in a world of violent idiots. They were right. Everyone else was wrong. They were just too dumb to see it. After all, what did the average man have to hold against the super-geniuses that were the Luthors? Not much, to be honest… It was a deadly mix of pride, vanity and ego. And both of them were so self-assured, they simply could not fathom being wrong. Maybe Lena was better than Lex, drawing the line at murder, but she was not against kidnapping, betrayal, imprisoning, threatening or injuring, so that wasn't saying much.

And especially for Lena, she seemed never to have heard the phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". Even if everything she was doing was for the good of humanity, Lex used to make the same claim about his own works. And even if Lena genuinely had humanity's best interest at heart, the phrase spoke for itself. Good intentions weren't always enough. Ends didn't always justify means. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time one of Lena's "great" ideas had been used for evil. The woman just didn't seem to learn. Not from her mistakes, nor her brother's. It was a trait that ran in the family, though, because Lex never seemed to learn from his, or Lena's, mistakes either.

So even if Lena was trying to take the nice route, her refusal to see any downside with her plans was her fatal flaw. The road to hell was pavedwith good intentions and it was a road Lena was speeding down once again, though just like always, she just didn't see it that way. It would be her loss, again, when it finally came back around to haunt her. But just like Lex, Lena had a habit of becoming too infatuated with the idea of being the savior of humanity to care. They were, like always, blinded from the truth by their delusions of grandeur. Even if Lena's God-complex was more benevolent in intention, the phrase spoke for itself…

It was just a dangerous game either way. There was no such thing as a truly good God-complex because every God-complex was inherently short-sighed and narrow-minded. In order to have a God-complex, one had to believe they were better than everyone else and, thusly, were exempt from criticism. Both Lex and Lena were stubborn, refusing to see any road except their own, and that was another fatal flaw of theirs: their refusal to be humble and listen to the concerns of others. They were so convinced of their own supposed higher intelligence that it was making them arrogant and foolish. They thought they knew what was best for the world even though they didn't, but they refused to listen to any criticism. Both of the Luthors were just so lost in their own intelligence that they were convinced they were the only ones to see the world as it truly was. This false sense of superiority was a dangerous game, allowing them to justify all their shady actions and continue the delusion that they were always right while everyone else was just an idiot who could never truly understand the marvelous mind of a Luthor. And a Luthor was _never_ wrong. Ever.

ooo

Even further back in the subconscious, though, lay the tragic case of how and why the cycle of abuse was so hard to escape. Because ofLex and Lena's shared abusive upbringing, there were other things that they had in common aside from personality traits and motives. This was not to say that Lena was cursed to be evil because of her upbringing with Lex, but it _was _to say that because they were both raised in the same abusive home, it shouldn't have been a shock as to why they developed similarly unhealthy coping mechanisms over the span of their lives. They both grew up emotionally repressed and isolated. They both grew up with the desire to be loved. They both had the seemingly contradictory and paradoxical case of having both a superiority and inferiority complex, each Luthor constantly striving to prove his or herself worthy of praise and adoration while also believing that they were somehow better than everyone else. While Lex took that belief in a more tyrannical way, thinking that he deserved to rule the world because his intelligence made him the most competent and qualified ruler, Lena was simply certain that her way was _always_ the right way and that she was too smart to ever be wrong. But that was no less harmful than her brother's way of thinking.

The sibling duo also both grew up knowing how to lie, deceive, act and manipulate. They both grew up hiding their soft sides and being as cold and hard as they could. They both grew up fiercely competitive. Maybe Lex and Lena parted ways in later years, but they shared powerful and painful similarities due to their shared history. Their way of thinking, their natural distrust of the world around them, their perfectionist behaviors and ruthless determination, their willingness to do just about anything to win, their stubborn conviction, their shared trauma, their difficulty connecting with and opening up to others, their difficulty being weak, vulnerable or emotional, their obsessive love for science, knowledge and power, their inability to accept defeat or loss, their inability to forgive or forget. All of it stemmed from their abusive upbringing, at the cruel hands of a perfectionist and overly-demanding mother and a never-satisfied and half-absent father.

All of these destructive behaviors and philosophies did not just pop up out of nowhere. They were developed over years and years, and because Lex and Lena had lived in such close quarters for so long, a lot of these more subtle and subconscious traits, thoughts and behaviors were shared between the two of them. Their criticalness and chess-master ways were proof of that. Being raised in the Luthor house meant nothing less than perfection, and absolutely no weakness or vulnerability at all. They always had to be in control. Of everything. Now, that was not to say either Luthor was destined to become the other, but their common past meant that both of them had gone through the same things. In turn, of course that would wind up making them similar. It was how the cycle of abuse was perpetuated.

When a parent abuses a child, the child picks up on those behaviors and passes them down, whether knowingly or not. And Lena and Lex could both attest to this. But the cycle of abuse did not absolve them of guilt, responsibility or accountability, it just explained why they thought and acted the way that they did. Why was Lena so bitter and guarded? Because her family had broken her heart many times over. Why was she so defensive and wary? Because she was used to being loathed or mistrusted. Why was Lena so obsessed with finding peace and order? Because her life had been nothing but chaos and pain. Why did Lena hide her emotions? Because that was what her parents taught her to do. Why did Lena have no qualms about manipulating or betraying others for her own gain? Because its what she saw her family do all the time growing up. Why did Lena hate being lied to, despite being a liar herself? Because you never ever, ever lied to a Luthor. It was just how things were while she was growing up.

So the rules were simple. Repress emotions. Win no matter what. Feel free to use any tactics. But do not let those tactics be used against you. Lena could lie and betray with no remorse because it was what she had been exposed to as a kid. But she refused to be on the receiving end because a Luthor was never outwitted and while Luthors were under no obligation to be respectful or honorable to others, the world had best treat the Luthors well, or taste revenge. And again, competitiveness ran in the family as well. How many times had Lillian escaped prison? Hadn't Lex used his dying gasps just to hurt Lena one last time? And wasn't it Lena who took upon the impossible task of trying to reign in the entire human race? Always come out on top. Never surrender. Never settle for second. Go down fighting. There were no stalemates in real life, only chess.

Rub salt in the wounds, play dirty, hold grudges, be ruthless. They were messages Lex and Lena had both knowingly and unknowingly learned as kids, and they had followed through well into their adult years. Just like Lex, Lena never feared a bit of violence, or physical combat. And both of them knew how to hold grudges, especially if they felt they had been deeply wronged. Both of them were more than willing to go to extreme measures to escape pain, or inflict it upon someone whom they deemed worthy of the punishment. Lex was no stranger to using his minions as human-shields or human-targets, and Lena, although she would not kill Kara, did not mind roughing her up a bit and even exposing her to nonlethal (but still agonizing) doses of Kryptonite. They were both ruthless and vicious and violent in their own ways.

But most importantly, both of the Luthors shared the same deepest desire: to be the hero. Even if they went in dramatically different ways to achieve that goal, both Lena and Lex wanted to be loved and admired by the world. They wanted to be the good guys. Although they were both already convinced that they _were _the good guys, they wanted everyone else to see and acknowledge it too. And neither of them had ever been shy about admitting it! Maybe the similarities between Lex and Lena were more than they realized. Maybe, in some way, Lena was just like Lex.

"_I am good. And I always was."_

"_I've always been a hero."_

**AN: Before anyone comes for me, I just want to say that while I agree that Lena is not like Lex and will not become a female version of him, they still do share some eerie similarities. I want to discuss how, as good as Lena is, she is not perfectly innocent. Nor is she free from the evil of her family. And this is not because she, or the family name, is evil, but because that's just how the cycle of abuse goes. 5x08 even referenced the Lex/Lena similarities with the last 2 lines in this fic. The Luthors are very similar, not in action, but in subconscious desires and personality. I think it's a fascinating parallel that should be studied (without flamewars or people just saying that Lena is Female!Lex). **

**I honestly want the show to explore how eerily similar Lex and Lena are, not to tease us with possibly-evil Lena, but to show how much the cycle of violence can creep up on a person. Like I said in the fic, no child of abuse grows up wanting to follow down that path, yet it's not an easy cycle to escape. Lena's subconscious and unintentional similarities with Lex could be a great way to point that out. I do not want to sound defeatist and imply that I think Lena is forever doomed to bear the evil of her family name, but I DO want to discuss how very Lex-like she can be, and the significance of that, both for the lore and for the real world application (again, the cycle of abuse). Lena is a lot more like Lex than she thinks, but that doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Instead, I think it could be a very interesting character study for both the Luthor siblings.**

**So for anyone who actually read this fic and cares enough, feel free to discuss Lena in the comments, but please try not to get too heated. Again, I'm not trying to start a war. I'm just wanting to explore a more controversial and multifaceted topic.**


End file.
